Marie-Aure´lie Bruno,1 Jan L Bernheim,2 Didier Ledoux,1 Fre´de´ric Pellas.

Microbes can influence host physiology and behavior in many ways. Here we review evidence suggesting that some microbes can contribute to host stress (and other microbes can contribute to increased resilience to stress). We explain how certain microbes, which we call “stress microbes,” can potentially benefit evolutionarily from inducing stress in a host, gaining access to host resources that can help fuel rapid microbial replication by increasing glucose levels in the blood, increasing intestinal permeability, and suppressing the immune system. Other (...) microbes, which we term “resilience microbes,” can potentially benefit from making hosts more resilient to stress. We hypothesize that “stress microbes” use a fast life history strategy involving greater host exploitation while “resilience microbes” use a slow life history strategy characterized by more aligned evolutionary interests with the host. In this paper, we review the evidence that microbes affect host stress and explain the evolutionary pressures that could lead microbes to manipulate host stress, discuss the physiological mechanisms that are known to be involved in both stress and microbial activity, and provide some testable predictions that follow from this hypothesis. (shrink)

Drawing on a range of philosophical, anthropological and political theories, Athena Athanasiou offers a new way of thinking about agonistic performativity with its critical connections to national and gender politics and alongside the political intricacies of affectivity, courage and justice. Through an ethnographic account of the urban feminist and antinationalist movement Women in Black of Belgrade during the Yugoslav wars, she shows that we might understand their dissident politics of mourning as a means to refigure political life beyond sovereign (...) accounts of subjectivity and agency. (shrink)

Smartphone use changes the landscape of social interactions, including introducing new social dilemmas to daily life. The challenge of putting down one's smartphone is an example of a classic coordination problem from game theory: the stag hunt game. In a stag hunt game, there are two possible coordination points, one that involves big payoffs for both partners (e.g., working together to hunt large game like stag) and one that involves smaller payoffs for both partners (e.g., individually hunting small game like (...) rabbits) but is safer because it does not require that your partner choose that option as well. This is similar to the challenges of putting down smartphones to have a face‐to‐face interaction: you and your interaction partner might both prefer the higher payoff option of having a face‐to‐face interaction, but neither of you wants to put down your phone and risk not having anything to do in the meantime. It is also discussed how new technological innovations are changing the payoffs of face‐to‐face conversation versus side‐by‐side smartphone scrolling. Insights that come from applying game theory to this “social media dilemma” are discussed here and potential solutions that come out of a game theoretic analysis are offered. Also see the video abstract here https://youtu.be/9esL578zM‐E. (shrink)

Dispossession describes the condition of those who have lost land, citizenship, property, and a broader belonging to the world. This thought-provoking book seeks to elaborate our understanding of dispossession outside of the conventional logic of possession, a hallmark of capitalism, liberalism, and humanism. Can dispossession simultaneously characterize political responses and opposition to the disenfranchisement associated with unjust dispossession of land, economic and political power, and basic conditions for living? In the context of neoliberal expropriation of labor and livelihood, dispossession opens (...) up a performative condition of being both affected by injustice and prompted to act. From the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa to the anti-neoliberal gatherings at Puerta del Sol, Syntagma and Zucchotti Park, an alternative political and affective economy of bodies in public is being formed. Bodies on the street are precarious - exposed to police force, they are also standing for, and opposing, their dispossession. These bodies insist upon their collective standing, organize themselves without and against hierarchy, and refuse to become disposable: they demand regard. This book interrogates the agonistic and open-ended corporeality and conviviality of the crowd as it assembles in cities to protest political and economic dispossession through a performative dispossession of the sovereign subject and its propriety. (shrink)

Orienting biases for speech may provide a foundation for language development. Although human infants show a bias for listening to speech from birth, the relation of a speech bias to later language development has not been established. Here, we examine whether infants' attention to speech directly predicts expressive vocabulary. Infants listened to speech or non-speech in a preferential listening procedure. Results show that infants' attention to speech at 12 months significantly predicted expressive vocabulary at 18 months, while indices of general (...) development did not. No predictive relationships were found for infants' attention to non-speech, or overall attention to sounds, suggesting that the relationship between speech and expressive vocabulary was not a function of infants' general attentiveness. Potentially ancient evolutionary perceptual capacities such as biases for conspecific vocalizations may provide a foundation for proficiency in formal systems such language, much like the approximate number sense may provide a foundation for formal mathematics. (shrink)

Concerns regarding corporate ethics have grown steadily throughout the past decade. In order to remain competitive, many organizational leaders are faced with the challenge of creating an ethical environment within their organization. A model is presented showing the process and elements necessary for the institutionalization of organizational ethics. The transformational leadership style lends itself well to the creation of an ethical environment and is suggested as a means to facilitate the institutionalization of corporate ethics. Finally, the benefits of using transformational (...) leadership are demonstrated through the components of a psychological contract, organizational commitment, and ethical culture to institutionalize organizational ethics. (shrink)

In neocolonial contexts of globalization, the epistemological terrain of radical diversity poses significant ethical challenges to transnational feminisms. In view of historical associations between knowledge and discourses of love which were conditioned by imperialist brands of humanism and benevolence under colonialism, this paper argues for a deconstructionist approach to conceptualizing love in relation to knowledge and for an ethics that severs the association with benevolence, instead making alterity the basis for its account.

Research on ethical formation in engineering has largely focused on assessing students’ abilities to recognize ethical issues and reason through ethical dilemmas. In this paper, we depict a conceptual framework for understanding how students develop into ethical engineers that involves dimensions beyond ethical awareness and judgment. In particular, we explore the role of ethical motivation in engineering students’ ethical formation. Ethical motivation is the process of deciding to act upon an ethical decision based on one’s valuing of ethics, as well (...) as one’s ability to prioritize moral concerns and professional values over personal interests. To prepare students to prioritize ethical and professional obligations, ethical training needs to help students become aware of and prepared to act upon both personal and professional values. This paper demonstrates how ethical motivation can be operationalized and assessed in engineering ethics curriculum by sharing findings from assessments implemented during an interdisciplinary engineering ethics course across two semesters. Findings from this study will provide insights into how students internalize professional values into their views of engineers’ roles and ultimately into their future practice as engineers. The approach used in this study can guide instructors interested in assessing ethical motivation and related constructs in their curriculums. (shrink)

Purpose - The aim of this research was to investigate the effect of transformational leadership and transactional contingent reward as complementary, but distinct, forms of leadership on facets of organizational identification via the perception of innovation and goal organizational values. Design/methodology/approach – Three studies were carried out implementing either a measurement of mediation or experimental-causal-chain design to test for the hypothesized effects. Findings - The measurement of mediation study showed that transformational leadership had a positive direct and indirect effect, via (...) innovation value orientation, on cognitive identification, whereas transactional contingent reward was more strongly related to affective, rather than cognitive, identification, and goal orientation was a mediator of their link. The findings of the two experimental-causal-chain studies further supported the hypothesized effects. Transformational leadership was found to lead subordinates to perceive the culture as more innovative compared to transactional contingent reward, whereas transactional contingent reward led employees to perceive the culture as more goal, than innovation, oriented. Finally, innovation, compared to goal, value orientation increased cognitive identification, while goal orientation facilitated affective, rather than cognitive, identification. Implications - The practical implications involve the development of strategies organizations can apply, such as leadership training programs, to strengthen their ties with their employees, which, in turn, may have a positive impact on in-role, as well as extra-role, behaviors. Originality/Value – The originality of this research concerns the identification of distinct mechanisms explaining the effect of transformational leadership and transactional contingent reward on cognitive and affective identification applying an organizational culture perspective and a combination of measurement and causal mediation designs. (shrink)

German philosopher Martin Heidegger stirred educators when in 1951 he claimed teaching is more difficult than learning because teachers must ‘learn to let learn’. However in the main he left the aphorism unexplained as part of a brief four-paragraph, less than two-page set of observations concerning the relationship of teaching to learning; and concluded at the end of those observations that to become a teacher is an ‘exalted matter’. This paper investigates both of Heidegger's claims, interpreting letting learn in the (...) context of Heidegger's larger philosophical project, and suggesting why in light of that project to become a teacher is an exalted concern. The methodology guiding the inquiry is largely hermeneutic, the purpose of the essay to interpret teaching from a Heideggerian perspective: its nature and general method. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Jahrbuch für Wissenschaft und Ethik Jahrgang: 19 Heft: 1 Seiten: 147-162.

Disorders of consciousness (DOC) raise profound scientific, clinical, ethical, and philosophical issues. Growing knowledge on fundamental principles of brain organization in healthy individuals offers new opportunities for a better understanding of residual brain function in DOCs. We here discuss new perspectives derived from a recently proposed scheme of brain organization underlying consciousness in healthy individuals. In this scheme, thalamo-cortical networks can be divided into two, often antagonistic, global systems: (i) a system of externally oriented, sensory-motor networks (the ‘‘extrinsic’’ system); and (...) (ii) a system of inward-oriented networks (the ‘‘intrinsic’’ or default system). According to this framework, four distinct mental states would be possible that could be relevant for understanding DOCs. In normal healthy volunteers and locked-in syndrome patients, a state of high functionality of both the extrinsic and intrinsic or default systems is expected — associated with full awareness of environment and self. In this case, mental imagery tasks combined with fMRI can be used to detect covert awareness in patients that are unable to communicate. According to the framework, two complementary states of system imbalance are also possible, in which one system is in a hyperfunctional state, while the other is hypoactive. Extrinsic system hyperfunction is expected to lead to a state of total sensory-motor ‘‘absorption’’ or ‘‘lost self.’’ In contrast, intrinsic or default system hyperfunction is expected to lead to a state of complete detachment from the external world. A state where both extrinsic and intrinsic systems are hypofunctional is predicted to lead to markedly impaired consciousness as seen in DOCs. Finally, we review the potential use of ultra-slow fluctuations in BOLD signal as a tool for assessing the functional integrity of extrinsic and intrinsic systems during ‘‘resting state’’ fMRI acquisitions.. (shrink)

This article applies a critical femininities perspective to the concept of women’s leadership, interrogating the market-oriented instrumentalization of femininity. The author presents empirical research consisting of in-depth interviews conducted with young women leaders in European student organizations. These participants juggle complicity and subversion as they negotiate the divergent expectations of femininity and leadership through interpersonal interactions and sociocultural positionalities. In these narratives the themes of social responsibility, difference, femininity, culture and embodiment are interlaced. The analysis of findings complicates monolithic interpretations (...) of femininity by evidencing intra-categorical fracturing, multiplicity in locations and manifestations of femininities, conflicting attachments and affective relations to femininity, and broader geopolitical contextualization. This theoretically and practically challenges tropes of hegemonic femininity, and presents opportunities for resistance. On this basis the author argues for countering the feminist trouble of engaging with non-transgressive femininity from within strongly normative spaces in the development of critical femininity studies. (shrink)

In this article, we contribute to sociological literatures on morality, professional and institutional contexts, and morally stigmatized ‘dirty work’ by emphasizing and exploring how they mutually inform one another in lawyers’ work activities. Drawing on interview data with 58 practitioners in the commercial legal industry in Singapore, we analyze how they experience professional and institutional constraints on the expressions of morality in their work. Our findings illustrate how a dominant managerial and economic focus maintains and reproduces a constrained form of (...) morality, limited to instrumental, utilitarian and commercial ends, and subordinated to lucrative client and firm interests. We discuss our findings in terms of the need to research and reform professions in ways that support more rounded and unconstrained moral reflexivity and autonomy in how work is undertaken and valued. This in turn has implications for how organizations and professions might achieve alternative moral institutional orders, and for legal work to avoid the moral and social taints of dirty work. (shrink)

Noreen Khawaja's The Religion of Existence offers an interpretation of Søren Kierkegaard's account of sin and despair as an account of alienation and our struggle to overcome it. I argue that Khawaja's interpretation of Kierkegaard is incompatible with Kierkegaard's insistence that sin must necessarily be the sinner's own fault—a result of the sinner's own free choice. I consider two possible ways of harmonizing Khawaja's account with this claim, one proposing a fictive acceptance of fault for what is not actually one's (...) fault, and one based on the claim that sin presupposes sin-consciousness, but argue that neither constitutes a satisfactory solution. I conclude that while alienation does constitute sin for Kierkegaard, it does so for a different reason than Khawaja proposes. (shrink)

According to Roger Scruton, it is not possible for photographs to be representational art. Most responses to Scruton’s scepticism are versions of the claim that Scruton disregards the extent to which intentionality features in photography; but these cannot force him to give up his notion of the ideal photograph. My approach is to argue that Scruton has misconstrued the role of causation in his discussion of photography. I claim that although Scruton insists that the ideal photograph is defined by its (...) ‘merely causal’ provenance, in fact he fails to take the causal provenance of photographs seriously enough. To replace Scruton’s notion of the ideal photograph, I offer a substantive account of the causal provenance of photographs, centred on the distinctive role of ‘the photographic event’. I conclude that, with a proper understanding of the photographic process, we have good reason to re-open the question of photography as a representational art. (shrink)

The author explores how the discursive practices of social texts relate to the subjectivities of readers. Employing Dorothy Smith's notion of femininity as textually mediated discourse, the author analyzes how teenage girls read the depictions of femininity in the glossy advertisements of fashion magazines. Through interviews with 48 girls aged 13 to 17 years, she explores both why and how young girls negotiate “what it means to be a woman.” Most young girls in her study draw on stereotypical meanings of (...) adult femininity. By giving these stereotypes truth status, these readers valorize not only patriarchal meanings of womanhood but also naturalize associations between femininity and the commodities through which this femininity is expressed as the everyday doing of gender. The author concludes by discussing implications of this study for both a feminist theory and a feminist politics of culture. (shrink)

As nursing moves towards a holistic approach to care, its publications on sexuality have proliferated. 'Sexuality' and 'Gender' are concepts which are extremely difficult to define. While sex refers to the physical differences of the body, gender concerns the psychological and sociocultural differences between females and males. This distinction between sex and gender is fundamental, since many differences between females and males are not biological in origin. And, when a person's gender and sex fall together in accordance with social norms, (...) it may not necessarily be a similar correlation for every individual. The nature of these similarities is essentially threefold. First, Thomas, Savage and Webb accept that there should be a nursing definition of sexuality. In different ways they acknowledge and refer to it as an integral part of a person's being and self concept. Secondly, the authors underline some of the complexities and difficulties nurses have defining and dealing with it in professional relationships as well as on the level of self reflection, knowledge, attitudes and beliefs. Thirdly, all three surveys show why such difficulties prevail, and go on to make suggestions for change in nursing interventions and training. This article summarizes these contributions and discusses the ethical problems which nurses face in dealing with the sexuality of their patients. Pendant que les soins deviennent plus complet, les publications sur la sexualité se sont multipliés. Sexualité et genre sont des idées qui sont difficiles à définir. Pendant que 'sexualité' fait allusion aux différences entre les corps, 'genre' regarde les différences psychologiques et socioculturelles entre femmes et hommes. Cette distinction entre sexualité et genre est fondamentale, puisque beaucoup des différences entre femmes et hommes ne sont pas d'origine biologique. Et quand le genre et la sexualité d'une personne sont en accord avec les normes sociaux, il n'y a toujours pas une même correlation pour chaque individu. La nature de ces ressemblances est triple: premièrement, Thomas, Savage et Webb acceptent qu'une définition pour infirmiers/ères de las sexualité devrait exister. De plusières manières ils l'acceptent, et en réfèrent comme à un part total de l'être et idée de soi de la personne. Deuxièmement, les auteurs soulignent quelques-unes des difficultés et complexités que les infirmier/ères rencontrent dans leurs relations professionnelles aussi bien que dans leurs reflexions, compréhensions, attitudes et convictions personelles. Troisièmement, les trois études montrent pourquoi ces difficultès continuent encore, et suggèrent des changements en interventions et formation professionnelle. L'article-ci résume ces contributions et discute les problèmes éthiques des infirmier/ères vis-à-vis de la sexualité de leurs malades. Weil sich die ganzheitliche Pflege vermehrt, vermehren sich auch die Veröffentli chungen über Sexualität. Sexualität und Geschlecht sind Begriffe, die sehr schwierig zu beschreiben sind. Sexualität bezieht sich auf die physikalischen, und Geschlecht auf die psychologischen und kulturellen Unterschiede zwischen Frauen und Männern. Diese Unterschiede zwischen Sexualität und Geschlecht sind grundsätzlich, denn viele Verschiedenheiten zwischen Frauen und Männern haben keinen biologischen Ursprung. Wenn die Sexualität und das Geschlecht einer Person zusammen fallen mit den gesellschaftlichen Normen, bedeutet es noch nicht, dass es sich für alle solche Leute auf das selbe hinbezieht. Das bedeutende dieser Aehnlichkeiten ist dreifach: erstens, Thomas, Savage und Webb akzeptieren dass es eine Definition der Sexualität für die Krankenpflege geben sollte. Auf verschiedene Arten bestätigen sie sie, und weisen auf das Wesen der Person und deren Selbst-Vorstellung als etwas Vollständiges hin. Zweitens, diese Autoren betonen die Verwicklungen und Schwierigkeiten, die das Krankenpflegepersonal hat mit der Sexualität in beruflichen Beziehungen wie auch in persönlichem Nachdenken, Einstellungen und Ueberzeugungen. Drittens, alle drei Ueberblicke zeigen warum solche Schwierigkeiten weiterhin bestehen, und machen Vorschläge für Aenderungen in Pflegeeingriffen und Unterricht. Dieser Artikel fasst diese Beiträge zusammen und diskutiert die ethischen Probleme die das Krankenpflegepersonal hat mit der Sexualität der Patienten. (shrink)

When the richest 85 individuals in the world own as much as the poorest 3 billion people, one must ask about equity and social justice. Yet, the problem is not just individual, but also systemic. Just as nations have developed poverty lines to identify people who need help, so too, as this book argues, we need a measure of relative wealth that can guide policy makers, governments, development specialists, and economists. Approaching the question through theological, ethical, and economic analysis, the (...) book probes the dynamics of wealth creation, the effectiveness of national and international policies, and the underlying questions of poverty, wealth, and widening economic disparities. [Subject: Religious Studies, Ethics, Social Justice, Economic Policy]. (shrink)

In this essay, I trace the development of Julia Kristeva's theory and practice of "the subject in process/on trial" from her semiotic works of the 1960s to her psychoanalytic writings of the 1970s and 1980s. I read Kristeva's exploration of this "subject in process/on trial" as contributing to a postmodern feminist ethics.

Usage-based approaches to language hold that we learn multiword expressions as patterns of language from language usage, and that knowledge of these patterns underlies fluent language processing. This paper explores these claims by focusing upon verb–argument constructions such as “V about n.” These are productive constructions that bind syntax, lexis, and semantics. It presents analyses of usage patterns of English VACs in terms of their grammatical form, semantics, lexical constituency, and distribution patterns in large corpora; patterns of VAC usage in (...) child-directed speech and child language acquisition; and investigations of VAC free-association and psycholinguistic studies of online processing. We conclude that VACs are highly patterned in usage, that this patterning drives language acquisition, and that language processing is sensitive to the forms of the syntagmatic construction and their distributional statistics, the contingency of their association with meaning, and spreading activation and prototypicality effects in semantic reference. Language users have rich implicit knowledge of the statistics of multiword sequences. (shrink)

Photography is valued as a medium for recording and visually reproducing features of the world. I seek to challenge the view that photography is fundamentally a recording process and that every photograph is a record—a view that I claim is based on a ‘single-stage’ misconception of the process. I propose an alternative, ‘multi-stage’ account in which I argue that causal registration of light is not equivalent to recording and reproducing an image. Intervention or non-intervention by photographers is more sophisticated than (...) the traditional view allows. Using the multi-stage account, I describe four models for producing photographic images and pictures. (shrink)

Background and Objectives Primary care providers (PCPs) report decreased job satisfaction and high levels of burnout, yet little is known about their experience of moral distress. The aim of this study was to gain insight into the experiences of PCPs regarding moral distress including causative factors and proposed mitigation strategies. Methods This qualitative pilot study used semi-structured interviews to identify causes of moral distress in PCPs in an academic family medicine department. Interviews were analyzed using conventional content analysis. Results Of (...) 35 eligible participants, 12 completed the study (34% participation rate). Most were white, female, and had practiced for less than 10 years. Four PCPs had considered leaving their position due to moral distress. Participants identified five causes of moral distress: policies and procedures that conflict with patient needs, the unpredictable nature of primary care, need to “bend the rules,” lack of accountability, and lack of support staff. Six internal conflicts made resolving morally distressing situations difficult: perceived powerlessness, sense of responsibility, socialization to follow orders, emotional toll of the job, competing obligations, and fear of mistakes. Conclusions These findings matched themes in the current literature and identified an unbending infrastructure. This, coupled with the chaotic nature of primary care, resulted in frequent moral distress. Participants offered solutions to reduce and mitigate moral distress (also similar with current literature) and suggested moral distress and burnout are closely linked. (shrink)